CDR-RW Mini Media

8cm CD recordable and rewritable media – offering a capacity of 185MB – have been available for a number of years. Most tray-loading CD players are already designed to handle 8cm disks, via a recess in the tray that is exactly the right diameter to accommodate a mini CD. Slot-loading CD drives – such as in-car players – some carousel multi-changers and laptop PC drives require use of a simple adapter to use the miniature format. Only PCs with vertical CD-ROM drives are unable to handle the format.

By 2000 the format was being used as a convenient means of storing digital music and images in some MP3 players and digital cameras, respectively. So confident were Nikon that the format would eventually replace the floppy disk that the company announced, in late 2000, that it had developed a process to produce media with an increased capacity of 300MB, whilst retaining record/replay compatibility with existing CD drives.

The mini CD format is also available in the so called business card CD variant. These are conventional CD-R media, re-fashioned so as to resemble business cards. This is achieved either by cutting off two sides of the disc only, or by trimming all four sides so as to create a truly rectangular shape. Their capacity varies from 20 to 60MB depending of how much of the disc has been cut off. The format is marketed as an affordable alternative to printed product brochures, more easily distributed and capable of presenting promotional material in a multimedia fashion, exploiting audio and video as well as text and images. Sometimes referred to as a Personal Compact Disk (PCD), it is can also be used as a means to provide secure access to private on-line membership or e-commerce services.

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